EU judges to rule on Sellafield protest

29/05/2006 - 18:15:27
European judges will rule tomorrow on the legality of a Government decision to complain to the United Nations about the Sellafield nuclear plant.

Dublin launched UN action in 2001 over marine pollution from the site, on the Irish Sea coast of Britain in Cumbria.

And a UN Tribunal responded with recommendations for helping solve the long-running and bitter Anglo-Irish dispute over the environmental impact of the Sellafield site.

But the European Commission went to court accusing Ireland of breaching rules obliging member states to keep disputes involving EU law within EU jurisdiction.

An Advocate-General at the European Court of Justice has already backed the Commission’s case that the environmental conflict over Sellafield should be tackled within the EU.

Now the final verdict rests with the full court, which follows the Advocate-General’s legal “opinion” in about 80% of cases.

Lawyers for the Irish Government argued that Dublin was right to turn to te UN, because the case against the UK concerned the alleged flouting by the Sellafield plant’s operators of marine environmental protection obligations under the UN Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.

The Tribunal itself concluded that the dispute was soley based on UN requirements, even recommending “provisional measures” to resolve the problem, including further exchanges of information between the UK and Ireland, the monitoring of potential risks for the Irish Sea and pollution prevention measures.

But the Commission said environmental protection was an area of joint EU legal responsibility and that Ireland should not have asked an UN body to interpret EU laws and declare Britain’s responsibilities under them.

Earlier this year the Advocate-General Miguel Poiares Maduro said Ireland had breached its “duty of cooperation” under EU law by invoking UN dispute settlement procedures, without consulting Brussels.

Ireland turned to the UN specifically about the Sellafield MOX (mixed oxide) plant which recycles plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. It was constructed by British Nuclear Fuel following an environmental impact study published in 1993.

The plant was completed in 1996, but authorisation to operate it only came in October 2001, after five public enquiries into its economic justification.

Less than a month later, Ireland took its complaints to the UN body, citing environmental and health concerns regarding Sellafield’s emissions and complaining that the UK had failed to provide Dublin with a copy of the report assessing the plant’s economic justification.

But the move raised as many questions about clashing international jurisdictions as it did about the Sellafield dispute itself.